Deimel Firestar Electric Guitar Review

A lot of stateside guitar spotters got their
first peek at Frank Deimel’s craftsmanship
via Sonic Youth’s 2004 DVD Corporate
Ghost. Like much of the visual art created
and used by Sonic Youth, the DVD cover
is a mysterious twist of reality—it features
an x-ray of what looks like one of the band’s
many mangled Jazzmasters. Closer inspection,
though, revealed something else—12 strings,
an unusual pickup array, and a name on the
headstock showing that the Youth were looking
beyond depleted vintage reserves for their
fix of Fender offset-style axes.

Eight years later, Frank Deimel certainly
isn’t a household name among American
guitarists, but thanks to high-profile custom
work—including Ranaldo’s 12-string, a
fancy 6-string built for the late-great Nikki
Sudden (sort of a cross between a Zemaitis
and a Ted Newman Jones), and a Mustang-style
guitar for Simon Taylor-Davis of
the Klaxons—the Berlin-based luthier is
becoming an ever-looming presence on the
radar. This is especially true amongst fans
of Fender’s offset creations and other offbeat
instruments. Guitars like the versatile
and beautiful Firestar reviewed here may
yet find Deimel becoming a fixture on the
stateside custom and boutique landscape.

Space Programmed
Cadillac-gorgeous in its thin nitrocellulose,
saturn lavender metallic finish and gold
anodized pickguard, the Firestar looks and
feels like it was built from blueprints sent
aloft in a Gemini capsule and lost to orbital
exile since 1966. The prevailing design
inspirations are Jaguar, Jazzmaster, and non-reverse
Firebird, but there’s also more than
a touch of ’60s Japanese styling—and, in
the reverse Fender-style headstock, a nod
to Jimi’s upside down Stratocaster and ’80s
“super strat”-type motifs. Together, the elements
add up to a very balanced and distinctive
pastiche of psychedelic-era styling
idioms—an inspired and not-at-all easy feat
in these overly retro-minded times.

The Firestar’s balance is more than visual,
though. It feels great hanging over your
shoulder, with a compact American red alder
body that feels more like a Mustang in terms
of dimensions and weight than a Jazzmaster
or Firebird, all without looking too diminutive
or feeling insubstantial. The body contours,
meanwhile, both enhance comfort and soften
the blockier aspects of the guitar’s silhouette.

With its chunky-but-fast profile, the
Firestar’s Canadian rock maple neck evokes
the feel of a ’70s-vintage Telecaster Custom
and, to some extent, some of the more substantial
necks on non-reverse Firebirds of
the mid ’60s. If you’re used to slimmer ’60s
Fender C shapes, this neck will undoubtedly
seem like a handful your first few times
around. Ultimately, though, it’s a neck that
makes chording a breeze, and when mated
with the medium jumbo frets, can compel
you to get a little more athletic and aggressive
with bends. The Makassar ebony fretboard
imparts a sense of luxury and custom-shop
care. So do little touches like the bone nut,
the ’60s-style TonePros Kluson tuners (still the
easiest string change in the business), and the
high-quality capacitors and cotton-wrapped
wire concealed behind the pickguard.

While you can order just about any
pickup configuration for the Firestar, our
version came with a Novak P-90 in the
bridge and a Novak humbucker in the
neck position—both of which, in a general
sense, give you a cool hybrid of Telecaster
Custom and Firebird tone palettes. But you
can significantly expand the range of tones
with Deimel’s inspired take on a Jaguar-like
switching system, which gives you the option
to run the pickups in series or parallel, activate
a bass-cut filter for a more biting and
thin surf tone, or engage a piezo—which,
depending on your amp and pedal settings,
puts some very unique and harmonic-rich
tone flavors at your fingertips.

Aft of the pickups, the strings cross a
Mastery bridge—an ingenious and beautifully
designed piece of hardware that’s
increasingly embraced by frustrated Jaguar
and Jazzmaster players because it typically
improves intonation, sustain, and stability.
Deimel also opted for the very cool
Duesenberg Tremola vibrato system—a
killer-looking mutant cross of Bigsby and
Kauffman elements, with clever design
touches like an adjustable vibrato arm that
can be extended to near-Jag/Jazz lengths
and/or pivoted on the opposite axis so you
can position the handle closer or further
away from your picking hand.

Boss Starship
While the Firestar clearly plays off of offset
Fender styling cues, our particular model,
with its Novak P-90 and humbucker,
tended to sound more Kalamazoo bred
than Fullerton born. Heard via the relatively
blank slate of a Fender Twin Reverb,
it exhibits a tendency for rowdy and round
to barking voices, depending on the pickup
selection. The Novak P-90 walks a cool line
between husky and crystalline, depending
on how you set the guitar’s volume, with
excellent string-to-string definition and the
ability to send a fuzz or overdrive into a harmonically
charged state that’s great for stinging
leads or crunchy-but-detailed chords.
The bass-cut switch tames the aggressive
tendencies of the P-90 significantly, but it
renders the tone quite thin in a manner that
perhaps only surf-music fiends and a certain
brand of garage-rock lovers will love in live
settings. It’s a great flavor to have in a studio
setting, but probably one you’ll be more
inclined to leave alone onstage unless you’re
trying to tame the woof of a 15" speaker.

Novak’s humbucker adds a woolly and
round—but still very detailed—tone to the
mix. The combination of a 25 1/2" scale
and a good humbucker is always formidable—
especially for first-position chords or
detuned open tunings built around doubles
and drones—and on the Firestar, tunings
like DADGAD and open G and D become
positively massive, especially when you
lend a little extra treble to your amplifier.
Running the pickups in series enhances the
effect, adding dimension and girth. That’s
definitely a feature that can come in handy
onstage when you need a bump in output to
get over a loud band, or even in a mellow,
jazzier setting where you want to add a more
full-spectrum enhancement to a solo section.

Predictably, the Deusenberg Tremola
extends the expressive potential of the
Firestar considerably. In terms of feel, it’s
more Bigsby then anything else—no surprise,
given the big spring that gives it its
elasticity. It feels spongier than most Bigsbys
(newer ones, anyway), but while that’s ideal
for light coloration and feathering of chords,
it’s a little less ideal for fast vibrato. That
said, the extendable arm is great for tailoring
the system for a springier Jazzmaster feel or
a more immediate, Stratocaster-type leverage.
Given the inherent Bigsby-ness of the
unit, you can craft some very unique feeling
hybrids of all three systems.

The Verdict
One of the most beautiful things about
the Deimel Firestar is that it represents the
convergence of Frank Deimel’s considerable
experience as a top-flight builder and his very
open mind about electric guitar design—and
music in general. It’s an amazing rock ’n’
roll guitar, but it was built with the limitless
possibilities of noise rock in mind. The end
result is an artistically executed instrument
and an impressive combination of control,
stability, and boundlessness that will reward
rock dogmatists and boundary-smashing
experimentalists in equal measure.

Inevitably, it inherits some of the minor
problems that, at times, make its inspirational
forebears less-than-perfect guitars. The
Bisgby-like Tremola is less than completely
stable in terms of tuning, and the switch
array can seem like a handful if you tend to
do little more than switch back and forth
between the bridge and neck pickup on your
Telecaster. The very Fender-y feel of the
guitar can also sometimes leave you longing
for the more defined and concise sound of
Fender-style single-coils (which are an available
option). But make no mistake, this is a
guitar that can see you through myriad musical
situations—especially if you’re looking to
cover tone and techniques that you can’t get
from a more bare-bones instrument.

Gear Editor Charles Saufley is a career writer and editor from San Francisco. Before joining Premier Guitar he served as Associate Editor at Acoustic Guitar magazine (where his predecessor was esteemed PG Editor in Chief Shawn Hammond.) He became music obsessed not long after birth—thanks in no small part to older siblings who ‘babysat’ him with a set of headphones, Revolver, and Sticky Fingers. Charles still spends a lot of time listening to records. And his many git-fiddle heroes include Roger McGuinn, Pete Townshend, Tom Verlaine, Eddie Phillips, Nokie Edwards, Gabor Szabo, John Cippolina, Randy Holden, Erkin Koray, Greg Ginn, and Sonic Youth.